A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Yithian Elder

[Before we can tackle
the yithian elder, we need to tackle the yithan…whose entry is now up!Check it out/like/reblog here.]

Aaaaannnddd we’re back!Yikes.Sorry about that
unexpected vacation.It took me as much
by surprise as it took you.

Thanks to all of you rebloggers who have kept the flame
alive, most especially dungeoninspiration, who has gone above and beyond these
last few days. Cheers, everybody!

So…the yithian elder.Occult Bestiary’s cover
g—errr, entity.This is the CR 13
upgrade to the base model monster from Bestiary
3.Although really, yithian elders are
closer in spirit (and stat block) to the Great Race of Yith from Lovecraft’s
stories, for the simple reason that (given proper prep time) they can actually
fling their minds through pretty much all
of time and space, not just to creatures in telepathy range.They also have an array of psychic powers for
intelligence gathering and defense, and lightning guns that deal more d12s of
damage than you’ve ever held in your hands at one time.

So when you face yithian elders, you’re facing the real
deal—alien scientists and artists who hop from planet and eon in pursuit of
knowledge, experience, and especially survival.Which means you might be taking a mental vacation on another planet
while a yithian rides your body…or you might be defending your own planet from
a yithian invasion should they decide their need outweighs yours.

Adventurers wake in
strange bodies, their minds flung far into the future and possibly across
space.Horrible pyramid-shaped
attendants patiently explain that their minds have been swapped with yithians,
and they are in a hospice for the safety of themselves and their hosts.Assuming the adventurers don’t immediately
stage a jailbreak—an adventure all its own in their foreign bodies—they have a
chance to learn about the strange world and culture in which they find
themselves.Unfortunately, they
currently reside in the bodies of academic and political dissidents (as these
spheres are pretty much one and the same to this scientist race), and the
dominant faction has decided to take advantage of their rivals’ mental
absence.The establishment yithian
elders storm the hospice and attempt to see the adventurers, seeking to put
them through a show trial and have them executed before the dissidents return
to themselves.

Adventurers find
themselves at an auction for a planetoid shard.Among the bidders are a pair of yithian
elders who propose establishing an observation platform on the shard.No matter what the outcome of the auction,
the yithian elders intend to mentally possess or capture all of the auction participants
for further study.The adventuring
party’s main rival intends to use his time in a yithian elder body to reduce
the adventurers to lightning-charred ash.

Yithians were originally
a reptilian people before the great mind migration that gave them their
present shape. The remnants and outcasts
they left behind—those few yithians that survived decimation by flying
polyps—evolved into the serpentfolk and xulgath races, whose empires rose and
fell to slumber and barbarism in their turns. Longing to return to the world and the bodies
of their birth, the yithians are now back…and they are horrified at what the
races descendants have become.Below the
depths of the earth yithian elders are engaged in the campaign of extermination
and reverse genetic engineering, attempting to remold the scaled races into
proper host vessels. Needless to say, the serpentfolk, xulgaths, and
troglodytes are not submitting quietly.

—Occult Bestiary 62–63

And with that…WE’VE FINISHED OUR SECOND TRIP THROUGH THE
ALPHABET!And it only took 16 months
this time, instead of three years!How cool is that?

But don’t worry, we’ve still got plenty of Occult Bestiary monsters to keep us busy
for Round 3.See you later (today
hopefully, but definitely by this weekend) for the alter ego.

Wow! I haven't read enough Lovecraftian lore beyond some contemporaries and inspirations taken from him like, say, Bloodborne. But Another possibility just popped into my head after reading your entires....what if the Flumph were actually all of the collective moral conscience of the Great Race, transplanted into these diminutive and off-puting organic space traveling jellyfish? Whatever the Grate Race once were, what if one who had a lawful/good alignment realized his kind would be forever changed and rendered cold, indifferent scientists, and wanted to send forth another less cruel legacy into the aeons which sought to give warning and creche to those in need under the threat of eldritch horrors possibly tearing the veil into that world? I think that'll be my cannon for the little saintly jellies LOL!

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.